Neon, Bullets, and Blood.
The Ascent was a game that I was incredibly excited about. A cyberpunk diablo-like shooter is a dream combination for my own personal tastes. However; while the game was largely impressive, it was also so buggy that for months after it launched, my character was all but useless, glitched out of performing any hacking the game required of me. When it was announced that we would be getting new story DLC in the form of Cyber Heist, I loaded up the game and discovered that my once unusable character was finally working. About time.
Regardless of my issues with bugs, I adored The Ascent. Its main story was not particularly memorable, but the constant action, cyberpunk visuals and music, and the skills and augments you could wield made this isometric shooter a damn impressive time. Still, to see more content being made for it just over a year later made me curious if it would carry forward on the events of the main game or turn out to feel like one extra long side quest. While Cyber Heist does, in fact, take place after the main game, it is certainly more of the latter, offering a fantastic new location, but a story that is simply a three-hour fetch quest.
As Cyber Heist is simply offering a new area to explore, some new weapons, a new story campaign, and some side quests, I won’t be re-reviewing its core mechanics or combat systems again as none of that has changed. While the title has seen a few quality-of-life features over the course of the past year, such as being able to transmog your armor, there isn’t really anything fundamentally overhauled here as this more or less feels like a content pack drop than any sort of semi-sequel. Still, if you have not played The Ascent and are curious about just exactly what it is, check out my review for the base game here. As this is a brief review of its DLC, let’s continue.
Cyber Heist is roughly around 3-5 hours long depending on how much of its new map, the Dark Playground, you’ll explore. The map is pretty sizable with a few districts to call home, but while we are sold on this new location being “unlike any area we have been to so far”, it feels very similar to previous locations nonetheless, albeit with a bit more neon and some crazy environmental destruction. The main thrust of the narrative has you tracking down a scientist who has some cutting-edge technology that your client wants to have procured. You do have an antagonist in the form of a rival contractor, but apart from a few lines of dialogue, and one slick cutscene with a sniper rifle, they are simply as hollow as their hollowpoint rounds; all style and no substance.
As enemies will range anywhere from level 30 to 40, Cyber Heist can be significantly more challenging than anything you faced in the base game, with a few encounters that had me white-knuckling the controller as I rolled and exhausted all of my abilities to stay alive. While it’s been a year since I had dived into The Ascent whatsoever, I couldn’t tell you if any of the threats I encountered were new or just recycled enemies. Regardless, nothing lept at me as being something fresh or unique to what Cyber Heist was looking to offer.
Still, what is new is the inclusion of melee weapons, but I only found three during my entire stint of this DLC. I found a baseball bat that eventually was replaced by something called the Rock Crusher, but those all were sent to the scrap heap with I found the Guillotine, a glowing cyberpunk-infused katana that honestly, rarely left my hand. Sure, I would use my gun in some instances, but this short-length DLC was largely about my cyberpunk hero and their katana, taking on the world one slice at a time. While the melee weapons are solid, I never found a single new gun to rival what I already had equipped. This held true with playing the DLC to completion with my same augments, armor, and HD642 Dominator remaining on me at all times. The game’s PR write-up details new weapons apart from the new melee type, but I couldn’t tell you if anything I picked up was new or part of this DLC as nothing even came close to matching the stats and power of what I already had.
Cyber Heist’s biggest problem comes from the fact that it feels like one extra long side quest. While the Dark Playground is a solid new location, complete with one kick-ass train level, I feel like it could have been so much more, especially for a paid DLC add-on. Apart from the melee weapons, nothing really feels new here. The action is exactly as it was with all the same weapons, augments, and armor as before, with enemies that sadly don’t feel any different than what I experienced a year ago. Still, The Ascent has never been in a more polished and playable state, offering up some superb action, music, and cyberpunk spectacle.
Developer - Neon Giant. Publisher - Curve Digital. Released - August 18th, 2022. Available On - Xbox One, Series X/S, PlayStation 4, PlayStation 5, Windows. Rated - (M) Violence, Blood, Sexual Themes, Strong Language, Simulated Gambling.
Platform Reviewed - Xbox Series X. Review Access - The Ascent was played via Game Pass. A code for Cyber Heist was granted by the publisher.